Friday, February 27, 2009

CAN YOU HELP LAURA ?

Laura Gaudet Laura, 7 years old


The photo above is of my niece's daughter, Laura, who has been through so much in her seven years. She is the dearest, sweetest little girl you could ever meet.

Unbelievable as it may seem, Laura had a heart transplant when she was only 3-1/2 months old.

I couldn't even begin to add up the medical procedures Laura has endured since her heart transplant or the number of trips to Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto that she and her parents have made. It has been a long, emotional, exhausting road for Laura and her family.

Laura now has a chance to attend the World Transplant Games in Australia in August, 2009. She is so excited about the opportunity to participate in these Games, and I told her I would post her message on my website:




"My name is Laura. I’m 7 years old and live in Nova Scotia, Canada. When I was born, I had a tumor on my heart and at 3 1/2 months old, I received a heart transplant at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto.

This year I have been asked to participate in the 17th Annual World Transplant Games in Australia. I am very excited about this opportunity and feel proud to represent transplant patients from Canada.

In order to attend this event, I have to raise a lot of money. Please help support “Team Sick Kids” by pledging me for the Transplant Games. Events like this would not be possible without your support."


A donation of any amount would be so appreciated by Laura and her family.

To donate, please click on this link...



Laura's Donation Page



For a little girl who has been through so much trauma, pain, and suffering in her short life, being able to go to Australia would mean the world to her.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all those who are able to make a donation to Laura. You rock.

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Friday, February 13, 2009

ISABELLE CARO, STILL STICK THIN...[UPDATE: REST IN PEACE, ISABELLE]

anorexia Isabelle Caro Isabelle Caro, close-up from Nolita billboard ad, September, 2007

UPDATE #2 
(Jan 20, 2011)

Isabelle's mother has committed suicide:

MARIE CARO, THE MOTHER OF ISABELLE CARO, COMMITS SUICIDE

 
UPDATE #1:

Sadly, on November 17, 2010, Isabelle passed away.  
More details can be found in my post here:

Click link:


Warning


"A skeleton. I see a skeleton. But one on the road to recovery."
(Isabelle Caro)


anorexia Isabelle Caro
Oliviero Toscani's Nolita billboard ad featuring Isabelle Caro


"I thought this could be a chance to use my suffering to get a message across, and finally put an image on what thinness represents and the danger it leads to -- which is death...to make people react, for young girls who see this to think: 'Oh, so that's what lies behind the beautiful clothes, the hair, the image that we are shown of fashion.'"



anorexia Isabelle CaroIsabelle, 2007


"[My mother] said, 'Do you know how heavy this is?' " "I weighed 10 pounds more, and I kept thinking 'I'm heavier than that heavy gas cylinder so I am a burden on my mother.' And that's when I thought about wanting to lose weight, to stop my growth. I dropped to about 58 pounds. My meal was reduced to two squares of chocolate and five cornflakes. That's all I ate all day."



anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle, 2007


"I know that it will take time, but I would rather go slowly and surely rather than gain weight rapidly and then fall back into losing it again," she said. "I have to get used to how I look with more weight."



Isabelle, 2007


"I have suffered enormously from the way people look at me. When I first moved to Marseille, nobody spoke to me, people stared at me. I stopped going out of my house. In cafes and bars they refuse to serve me. And that's why I refused to talk about it for such a long time. I was so afraid of people judging me. People just think you just stop eating but that is not what anorexia is. You don't just decide from one day to the next to stop eating. It's very hard. It's real suffering, and it goes deep."



anorexia Isabelle Caro Isabelle, 2007


"I really want to have a child. And I hope my body will allow me to. My doctor says it's possible. I'm still not having periods -- my body is too weak -- but he says it is possible. Then for a relationship. I don't know yet. I'm with somebody now. I don't want to say very much because it's a bit complicated. At the moment it's more an affair of the heart than a physical relationship because, simply, I'm still very thin and it's still very difficult to enjoy normal physical relations with such a tiny body and a man who is a normal size. I'm still nervous about having sex."



anorexia Isabelle Caro Isabelle, 2007



"When I see myself now, I say, 'what a horror. I'm trying to get out of it, and I want young women to know that is possible."



Isabelle, 2007


"I’ve hidden myself and covered myself for too long. Now I want to show myself fearlessly, even though I know my body arouses repugnance. I want to recover because I love life and the riches of the universe. I want to show young people how dangerous this illness is."



anorexia lanugo Isabelle Caro
Isabelle, 2007 (Note lanugo on her arms)


"Thinness leads to death and it is anything but beautiful."
(Isabelle Caro)



anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle, 2007


"I had a very complicated childhood, very difficult, very painful. My mother's big phobia was that I would grow. She spent her time measuring my height. She wouldn't let me go outside because she'd heard that fresh air makes children grow, and that's why I was kept at home. It was completely traumatic."



anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle, 2008


"You feel as if you master everything, that you are in total control, and then little by little you fall into this hellish spiral, a spiral of death."



anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle, 2008


"At one point I went right down to just less than four stone but now I'm almost five. I know I'll keep fighting it because I love life and I believe in that more than anything."



anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle, 2008


"I would fall into comas and when I woke up I'd be delirious, not even remembering who I was."


anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle, 2008



"You feel as if you master everything, that you are in total control, and then little by little you fall into this hellish spiral, a spiral of death."



anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle on the scale, 2007


"That Christmas [when Isabelle was 13 years old] I asked for some scales. I saw I'd dropped a few pounds so I started eating less and less. My parents were so worried I spent hours weighing myself that mum broke my scales."



anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle, 2007


"I'd panic if I even put on a few grams. I rejected everything I wanted and everything that made me happy for some ideal of a pure life. It was an absolute hell - that's what this disease does to you."


anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle, 2007


"I had a very close relationship with my mother, which led me down the path of anorexia. She wanted me to be her little girl for ever. So as I started puberty I hated the idea that my body was going to change. I wanted to have the body of a child for ever, to make my mother happy."



anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle Caro, 2007




"To break the monotony of my younger days I pretended to have a stomach ache... I ended up in hospital and the doctor weighed me and my mother shot me a disapproving glance when he said how many kilos I was. I understood that for her I weighed too much. So from that day, slowly, slowly, I stopped eating."


anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle Caro, 2007


"I'd have painful cramps every morning and I would crawl to the fridge to eat something just so I had enough strength to get in the shower. And then my body was so tender and so ravaged by needles from the transfusions that every drop of water hurt."




anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle Caro from Toscani's Nolita shoot, September, 2007


"[My psychologist] said the only way I could get through it was to see them just on Mother's Day or Father's Day at first. She noticed that my mother always argued with me about food. But my parents weren't happy... and the doctor only helped me for six months."




anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle Caro, 2007


"Every day I fight the demons of anorexia... I'm eating more calories every day and it's really hard, but I know I'll make it."




anorexia Isabelle Caro
Stills of Isabelle Caro from the Toscani Nolita ad shoot



"I still eat almost nothing, but I've stopped vomiting. I have started to distinguish tastes of things. I have tried ice-cream - it's delicious."





anorexia Isabelle Caro Isabelle Caro, January, 2009


"Now I want to show myself without fear, even though I know that my body is repugnant. The suffering I have experienced only makes sense if it can be of help to others who have fallen in to the trap from which I am trying to escape."


anorexia Isabelle Caro
Isabelle Caro at book signing (her autobiography), January, 2009

My other posts on Isabelle...


KIMMER...MEET ISABELLE CARO



Links:
Isabelle Caro's blog:
(English translation of main blog page here):


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Saturday, February 7, 2009

ANOREXIA: DANA, 8 YEARS OLD AND ANOREXIC

Dana child anorexic Dana


Dana is only eight years old and anorexic.

She consumed only 175 calories a day and exercised to the point of exhaustion, skipping for an hour after each meal and then running to burn off more calories.

Dana's parents, in a desperate attempt to save her, admitted her to Rhodes Farm Clinic in the UK for an intensive 12-week program. Rhodes Farm Clinic treats young girls with eating disorders. This documentary follows Dana's treatment there.

Dana child anorexic
Dana at Rhodes Farm Clinic

Dr. Dee Dawson, Medical Director of the Rhodes Farm Clinic, says: "I'm in no doubt now that the average age is falling. We are seeing more 8, 9, 10-year-olds than we have ever seen before."


Dana child anorexic
Sandra, Dana's mom

Dana's mom, Sandra says, "Dana wasn't the kind of kid you'd expect this to happen to."












(Many thanks to MJ for letting me know about this documentary. Much appreciated)


PLEASE NOTE THAT I HAVE BEEN CONTACTED BY DANA'S MOTHER AND SHARE HER CONCERN THAT DANA MAY READ THE COMMENTS ON THIS POST. THEREFORE, I WILL NO LONGER BE PUBLISHING ANY FURTHER COMMENTS AND HAVE REMOVED ALL PREVIOUSLY-PUBLISHED COMMENTS.

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO TOOK THE TIME TO COMMENT.


~ Medusa

And many thanks to the Anonymous poster who advised me that the videos originally posted were no longer working. I've remedied that.

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Thursday, February 5, 2009

PROBLEM WITH MY WEBSITE, MEDUSA, LOADING IN INTERNET EXPLORER...

UPDATE:

I think I've fixed the problem :^)

If you find you are still having problems with pages loading, would you please email me at gorgon@2medusa.com. Again, my apologies for any inconvenience this has caused.

Thanks so much for your patience.

~ Medusa

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi, everyone...

A sudden glitch has appeared in Internet Explorer that is not allowing my website to load properly. I am working on it right now and hope to have it fixed very soon.

In the meantime, you can view my website by using Firefox:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/


Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused!

~Medusa

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Sunday, February 1, 2009

ANOREXIA: IN MEMORY OF ALICE RAE...

Alice Rae anorexiaAlice Rae


Death came in the night, while she was sleeping.

Alice was only 18 when she suddenly died during the night of January 14, 2009. Her mother, Dr. Christine Rae, found Alice dead in bed.



Alice Rae anorexia

"Alice was not very well but then her death was very sudden. I found her. She died in her sleep," said Alice's mother, Dr. Rae. "It is such a tragedy, it really is. She was such a lovely girl, beautiful and clever. We were very proud of her. But she had become very very thin. She had been going through a bad patch. In the last year she really deteriorated. I do not know what caused her anorexia. She had treatment with many people. She had been very ill for two years...her death was very sudden."

Alice Rae anorexia

Alice's future was bright. She had received an offer of placement at Cambridge University to study Economics.

Alice developed anorexia two years ago, in 2007. She had received treatment at an eating disorder clinic In Eastleigh, UK. Her care at the clinic is undergoing a full review as Alice's family were not happy with the treatment she received there.


Alice Rae anorexia

Alice's funeral was held this past Friday, January 30th, 2009:

From thisishampshire.net:

"Funeral for Alice Rae who died after anorexia battle"
6:06pm Friday 30th January 2009

"Friends and family of a gifted student who died after a two-year battle with anorexia gathered for her funeral today.

Alice Rae, 18, from Houghton, near Winchester, was buried following a service in All Saints Church, Houghton, attended by more than 130 people.

The clergyman who conducted the funeral described it as a 'very moving and beautiful' tribute to a 'very special person.'

Miss Rae's body was taken into the church in a wicker coffin chosen by her family which was covered with pink roses.

Miss Rae's brothers and sister William, Tom and Georgina spoke movingly about the life of their sister, while friends also took part in the service.

The student's friends offered their own reflections on the teenager and read the poem Death Is Nothing At All by Canon Henry Scott-Holland.

As well as prayers and readings, the congregation sang the hymns Lord Of All Hopefulness, Lord Of The Dance and Abide With Me.

The Rev Ronald Corne, Rector of Broughton with Bossington and Houghton and Mottisfont, who conducted the service, said afterwards: 'All the young people spoke movingly of her sister and friend, of what a lovely girl she was, and how much they were all going to miss her.

Alice Rae anorexia

'The funeral service for Alice Rae was obviously heartbreaking and poignant but it was also filled with great thanksgiving for the gift of a very special person and her life.

'It was a very moving and beautiful service but of course extremely difficult.

'The service was also an important element in assisting Alice's family and friends in their grieving and in the eventual process of healing.

'The church and especially the ministry team will continue to care for the family and will be supporting them with pastoral care in the days and months to come.

'At this stage the family feel unable to speak publicly about the loss of their daughter and appreciate some time and space to come to terms with their grief.'

Miss Rae had finished her A-levels and had a place at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, at the time of her death.

Alice Rae anorexia

She was found dead in her bed by her GP mother, Dr Christine Rae, at the home she shared with her mother and father Peter, a company director, on Wednesday January 14.

Before the funeral, Dr Helen Harvey, headmistress of the private St Swithun's School in Winchester, said: 'I was very upset and shocked to hear of Alice's death following her two year battle with anorexia.

'She left St Swithun's three years ago having achieved 9 A*s at GCSE and during her time here, I remember her as a highly intelligent, happy, well-liked member of the school community who played a full part in school life and had huge potential for the future.

'Everyone who knew Alice is deeply saddened by her death and our thoughts are with her parents and family.'"

Alice Rae anorexia


Another death from anorexia, another heartbreaking tragedy. Rest in peace, dear Alice.


Links:

www.dailymail.co.uk/
www.dailyecho.co.uk/
www.thesun.co.uk/
www.facebook.com/
http://www.thisishampshire.net/

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